Those of you who have lost a pet have probably heard the story of the Rainbow Bridge. This is the place where our pets go to wait for us until we can be reunited again. Early this morning, another one of our animals, Maggie the horse, arrived at the Rainbow Bridge. Her death was completely unexpected, and that has made it even harder to swallow.

Last evening we had been out at the farm stacking hay for the winter. After several hours of hard work, we all decided it was time to go into town and get a nice meal. As we were getting ready to go, I realized I had forgotten something in the barn and went out quick to retrieve. On my way out to the barn I found Maggie laying in the fresh snow in the pasture. This in itself seemed a little odd, but even more odd was the fact that she didn’t immediately jump up when I approached her. After a moment of me calling her name, she finally jumped to her feet and ran off. I went into the barn and got my forgotten item and came back out again. I was once again greeted to Maggie laying on the ground. I knew something was wrong. I quickly went back to the farm house to get the others so we could all assess the situation.

It seemed obvious that Maggie had a condition called colic, which in equine terms means that she had abdominal pain. There are a bunch of causes of colic, but one of the scariest is a condition called an intestinal entrapment or intestinal torsion. Basically that means that a portion of her intestine gets twisted, and cut off from circulation. If that happens, immediate emergency surgery is required or the horse will die.

We got the vet out immediately and he evaluated Maggie. He thought she was in quite a bit of pain and gave her a bunch of pain killing medication to quiet her and then did a thourogh exam. At the end of the exam he said he didn’t find any evidence that she had a torsed intestine, and did the standard treatment of pumping a gallon of mineral oil into her stomach and then told us to keep her up and in an hour or two she should be better. He drove off with us feeling hopeful that this would resolve really quickly. It didn’t.

After hours of walking her and giving her additional pain medication, we had the vet come back out and check her again. He did another rectal exam and immediately found that her condition had dramatically changed. He said she had a torsion somewhere in her intestines because he found several sections of dilated colon that were causing her tremendous pain. The options were limited at that point. The most humane choice was to have her euthanized, which we reluctantly did.

Her time with us was too short. We had only had her a year.

–Pete